This film manages to be tragically heartbreaking yet tender and heartwarming. These characters are trying to survive and clinging on to whatever good thing comes their way because sometimes life is just so dire, you need to appreciate the simplest pleasures to keep on going.

David Gordon Green doesn't stereotype or exploit these characters or the setting in any way. Instead he highlights the beauty of the rural South, providing us a snapshot of what this area of the country looks like. It's nuanced, subtle, and beautiful.

It's also fascinating that the same man who directed this film would go on and direct "Pineapple Express" eight years later, but you can see his stamp all over both of his films.

I have been a fan of Anton Yelchin's work for a long time. He had a talent like no other actor and was the same age as me. It was devastating when I found out he died tragically back in 2016. He had so much left to do, so much more to accomplish. How could someone so talented be taken away so young?

This documentary feels kind of like closure. It dives into his childhood, his passion for music and film, his love of learning and most importantly, the love he had for his parents. Watching footage of his home movies, his photographs, his music made me feel closer to this enigma of someone I admired on the Big Screen but it didn't make it any less heartbreaking watch.

Yelchin loved the cinema and worked as if he was trying to beat the clock (It is revealed he suffered from Cystic Fibrosis) because he wasn't sure how much time he had left on this Earth. While his life was cut short by a freak accident, it is apparent he lived every day to the fullest, leaving behind a legacy of work that will be appreciated for the years to come.

I'm a total 90's kid that was raised on Nickelodeon and my love for Rocko's Modern Life has followed me well into my adulthood (I have a tattoo of Filburt on the back of my neck). When I found out Netflix was rebooting this, I was excited but very nervous of what the outcome would be. Often times reboots try to recapture the past but something goes missing, too many compromises are made, and in the end, the thing that was great when it first aired changes too much to be appreciated twenty years later as new material.

I can say this is not the case with "Static Cling". It does what a reboot should do: stay true to the original material by keeping its style but bringing a modern edge to it to remind us that it is just a reboot. It is aware its audience is loyal but has matured and grown from young kids to adults.

The trans story arc really brings the show into the modern age without it feeling forced, giving the reboot some great and touching moments. It also keeps its raunch factor--subtle enough to go past the censors but blunt enough to remind its once young viewers there's nothing like a good gag about jacking off in a kids show to really bring you back to the 90's. Keeping up with the anti-Capitalist themes brings it home the creators know their Millennial audience too well and are still anti-Capitalists at heart, maybe even more so now.

I appreciated the meta jokes involving change and how fans put so much expectation on reboots, only to be disappointed by the final outcome. Overall, this was a success. It would be nice if the creators moved forward with another special or another season, but if this ends up being the one off and this is truly the end of the road for Rocko and his friends, then I'm perfectly okay with it ending on this note.

I wasn't feeling well today so I decided to check out a random film on the Criterion Channel and thought The Housemaid would keep me entertained. What I didn't anticipate was the amount of drama that would keep me at the edge of my seat. Towards the end, I didn't know how to react except say "What the fuck?"

There is a lot to unpack with how we view men and women in relationships (men make the mess and women are forced to clean it up), the Madonna/Whore complex using a femme fatale to shame women for having premarital sex, and how toxic masculinity can bring demise to relationships, however it's too much to do in a review. With a film like this that is just so entertaining with the twists and turns, unpacking all of it just seems too exhaustive for such an extraordinary piece.

The acting was great, cinematography was gorgeous, and the story was perfection. The fact this was made nearly 60 years ago is astounding, especially with how sex and scandal were often times censored. I'm not too familiar with the history of Korean cinema, but I can't imagine the censors being more liberal than American cinema.

In short, men are awful and this is a whack-ass film.

]]>Heaven RamirezThe Business of Being Born, 2008 - ★★★★https://letterboxd.com/chickdelalynch/film/the-business-of-being-born/ letterboxd-review-71170108Fri, 2 Aug 2019 17:29:19 +12002019-07-30NoThe Business of Being Born20084.0

I was a little skeptical watching this when my roommate put it on, but this documentary ended up being more informative than I anticipated. It highlights the benefits of utilizing a midwife during childbirth over going to a hospital. It has been so ingrained that hospitals are safer than home births because of the "what ifs" that loom in our brains if there is a high risk pregnancy.

The fact is that pregnancy is one of the most extraordinary things a human body can do, but also one of the most natural. The body instinctively knows how to respond when a child is ready to be born yet hospitals want to interrupt that process by injecting numerous medications and perform many unnecessary C-Sections, turning hospitals into assembly lines where pregnant people go in and babies come out. Giving birth in a hospital is catering to the doctor's needs rather than the mother's. Bringing a child into the world is one thing to add to the list of things that Capitalism has completely turned upside down to squeeze out a hefty profit.

There is something to be said about the high mortality rate in the United States and I wish the documentary focused a little more on that. The subject goes deeper than just parents opting for hospital births over home births-- class and race are also different factors that come into play when we talk about the mortality rate.

Overall, the documentary made me think a little more about what it's like to have a child in a country where health care is a commodity rather than a right and expectant mothers are merely treated as vessels than human beings.

]]>Heaven RamirezOnce Upon a Time in Hollywood, 2019 - ★★★★½https://letterboxd.com/chickdelalynch/film/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood/ letterboxd-review-70867796Mon, 29 Jul 2019 16:57:37 +12002019-07-28NoOnce Upon a Time in Hollywood20194.5

This is a subdued film by Quentin Tarantino, but it's also his one of his strongest works to date. Tarantino manages to take the magic of the '60's and make it into his own personal love letter to the city of Los Angeles. One of the great talents Tarantino has is the ability to meander through the story, taking detours to delve deeper into the characters and the randomness life throws at them before going back on course to the main story line. If any other filmmaker did this, it would make the film tired and tedious but Tarantino knows how to take the scenic route without boring the viewer so the audience feels okay to go with him on the journey.

There was criticism before the release about Sharon Tate, played by the effervescent Margot Robbie, not having many speaking lines despite the film being very loosely based off the last year of her life. Tarantino shut the question down, causing an uproar about how we view women in film, especially when it comes to violence, and the history of Sharon Tate. Now that I have viewed to film I can see what Tarantino was trying to accomplish and it made sense to his vision so I won't go down that road. Are there other issues with the film that are a little problematic? Sure. They can be evaluated, analyzed, and critiqued but sometimes a movie is just a movie--a piece of art that is constructed for the sole purpose to entertain. I'll leave the pop culture critiques to the scholars.

The ending may disappoint some viewers, but not enough to completely ruin the entirety of the film. By the time you get to the end, you're okay with it because you met many other characters that you thoroughly enjoyed hanging out with for two and a half hours.

I will say I'm relishing in the fact we're seeing more films, books, television shows about awkward, horny, teenage girls. It's a topic that rarely gets discussed and remains a cloak of mystery, even amongst other women.

With that being said, I feel like there was so much potential with this film yet it was lackluster in its delivery. It's apparent this was written by 30 something year old women for 30 something year old women, which would be fine if the two main characters were 30 something year old women. I’m sure there are girls that age who are politically active but it felt as if the film was trying too hard to convince us how "woke" they were. I can only assume with Olivia Wilde as the director & the women who helped write the screenplay that they were writing it for themselves rather than the characters they had created.

The editing felt very slapped together and sloppy, the screenplay felt very rushed and there were character inconsistencies all over the place. It followed the “Everyone gets into an Ivy League” trope. Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever are so charming you’re willing to go on the ride with them, which I think carries much of the film. I think the film does the main purpose of entertaining and it’s created by women expanding the scope of voices. Is it groundbreaking? No.

Beautifully shot, great performance from Florence Pugh, who I think deserves awards for her performance. Ari Aster knows how to bring out heart wrenching performances out of his actors.

One good thing about watching this film with an audience is the permission to laugh at things that maybe you shouldn’t laugh at. There is some off-the-wall freaky stuff in this film, so the nervous laughter sometimes is the only appropriate response to what you see on screen.

I'd strongly recommend when watching this to let the movie wash over you like a wave with the first viewing then re-watch it with a critical eye on the second viewing. Everything in this film is purposeful--to see the little details after having one viewing under your belt makes it that much more special. It shows how much thought and care Aster put into making this film.